And for the letter N, please welcome Lady Arwen to the blog as the final interviewee of my NaNoWriMo Spotlight series. You can find her on the boards under the name River_Song where she audaciously attempted a NaNo novel in french. But she'll tell you all about that in the interview. Click here if you'd like to read her interview from last year which continues to be one of the most popular posts on my blog. Don't forget to enter the giveaway for Angel Eyes here!
Who are you?
I am a college student, a double major in Anthropology and
History. I have plans to go into Irish Archaeology, but Linguistics is another
favorite of mine. I am bilingual, speaking English (my mother tongue) and
French, and have recently begun studying Spanish, which I hope to master in the
next year or so. Outside of scholastic challenges, I am a hopeless nerd/geek,
and an aspiring makeup artist (I’m currently working on creating a full
Silurian costume for myself, makeup and all). I’m also single, 5’10” and always
keeping an eye out for an adventure.
Why did you pick NaNoWriMo to consume your November?
Honestly? I didn’t want to feel left out when all of my
writer friends were working on theirs. I was taking an insane number of units
last semester, so I never even pretended to aim for 50k. I think my personal
goal was 10k or 15k. And I could write off the hours as time spent “studying”.
This was my second year officially doing NaNoWriMo, and I
loved it, as usual. This year, I took a rather unusual route for my Nano, as
I’m sure you will discover shortly.
What’s new since I interviewed you last year?
Well, I’ve discovered some new techniques in the moulage
(crisis makeup) business, had a birthday, and visited Kansas .
What was your novel about this year, and why did you pick
that?
My novel for this year, Balafre de la Bête,
was designed as a French project, meaning that the entire novel is in French.
The story was originally based on Beauty
and the Beast, but slowly grew to become a sort of fractured fairytale. The
original concept had the Beast, or Balafre, as the female character and Beauty
as the male, but that quickly devolved when I began adding in little seasonings
of Dracula (Beauty is also a vampire), Robin Hood (Balafre reforms her
character before she meets Beauty, and robs from the evil queen, who is also
her evil step-mother), Snow White (see the evil queen bit) and Sleeping Beauty
(Beauty is awakened from his vampire state by a kiss from the curious Balafre).
The novel was inspired by studying storytelling in French. I
started with the idea of writing a novelette in French, and then began hunting
for a classic French fairy tale to base my story on. And thus Balafre was born.
What is your typical writing process like?
This year, I spent a lot of time sitting with a dictionary.
Writing in French cut my writing speed by about 60%, and the project definitely
broadened my vocabulary. I wrote almost everything on the computer, and I had
to re-read what I had already written before I could pick up writing each day.
Obviously, this slowed me down considerably, but I think the end product made
more sense.
How did your month go?
It went very quickly. I only wrote about a third of my goal,
and my brain nearly exploded. It was a lot of fun, though, and I’ll definitely
keep working on the story.
What did you learn from NaNoWriMo this year?
No story is simple. Due to my limited proficiency in my
second language, I had hoped to keep my story simple, and just tell Beauty and
the Beast as a gender-swapped story. There was no way to stretch the story that
much—it was too simple to hit even my very low word count goals. As a more
complex story, I definitely was challenged in my language skills, but I find
the characters adorable (as well as my sorry attempts at writing fiction in
French!).
Where else can we find you online?
A couple different places. www.taintedloves.blogspot.com
is my makeup and costuming blog, but I’ve been a bit lax on posting there. I’m
also a member of www.theteaspitters.blogspot.com
which is a blog that actually grew out of last year’s Nano. I’m Wren/Gunpowder
Organic on that blog. Be forewarned that it can sometimes be a scary place to
visit.
Lastly, I’m working on launching a new blog and showcase for
my work at www.wrenaissancewoman.com.
There is nothing up there right now and I don’t expect it to be ready for
launch for another month or so, but if you think of me this summer, stop by and
see what projects I’ve put up!
No comments:
Post a Comment